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Monthly Archives: December 2015

Since today is the first day of Advent, we thought we would celebrate with a Christmas-themed story in Year 1 storytime. Our choice was The Magical Snow Garden, by Tracey Corderoy and Jane Chapman.

What the blurb says:

Far away, where snowflakes twinkle like stars, Wellington penguin dreams of growing a garden. “Impossible!” say his friends. “You can’t grow a garden in the snow.” But Wellington is determined to create something truly magical…

What we all thought:

Before even starting to read, I asked the children what they thought the book was about and why it was magical. “Because it’s about a penguin who does the garden,” said some children, while others commented that “it’s a garden in the snow and flowers and plants can’t grow in the snow”. Both answers were great and summed up the storyline about Wellington, who dreams of creating a beautiful garden in the least likely setting. Despite his friends and gardening books telling him that he doesn’t have anything, including seeds, to make his dream come true, he does find a way around it and stuns all his friends with his determination and creativity.

The children loved the colourful pictures in this book and found it fascinating to see how an alternative garden could be made from sweet wrappers, buttons, and various other bits and bobs.

This would make an excellent prompt for classroom activities about science (gardening, flowers, etc) and art and perhaps we can revisit this in the library at some point. It was a lovely book to share and a great way to kick off the countdown to Christmas!

Many thanks to Little Tiger Press, who sent a copy of this book for review. Please note that this did not bias our opinion in any way.